Pithos

So I finally finished my devotional pithos!  I'm super excited about it.  

This is the product of decoupage and enamel paint (both new mediums for me), lubricated by plenty of wine and music.  The process was wonderful and turned out different than I expected. I will definitely try these mediums again... I like having glue under my fingers, smoothing out slippery god images...

It has images of all of the deites of the Thiasos of the Starry Bull, although Dionysos is a bit abstract - no direct images of him unless you count the child image of him with Hermes, or the Bull itself.  This abstraction felt right to me.  (I used an image of a female initiate from the Pompeii paintings for the heroines.)  I even managed to add an image of Estruscan Apollo at the last minute. 

Stepping outside myself for a moment

Tonight I lit candles at my shrines, and said prayers and made offerings on behalf of others, but none for myself.  I only put forth gratitude on my own behalf.  Partly this was inspired by Sannion's offerings for the community, the selflessness of which I think is very inspiring, and partly by being tired of my own self-pity.  I see nothing wrong in praying for oneself, or praying for guidance, but ideally even that should have a feel of gratitude and hope.  Too often, the focus on need seems to create this negative vortex. It's a hard hole to climb out of, and it doesn't feel like it puts me in the right space to receive anything.

Just love. (As my Love would say.)

Tomorrow I'm leaving for the Herbal Resurgence Rendezvous near Flagstaff.  Was particularly looking forward to meeting Sarah Lawless, and was very disappointed to hear she had to cancel at the last minute. But the event should still be rewarding.  Herbalism (and entheogens) has always interested me. I've made my own tinctures, incenses, salves, and such, but I've been gradually shifting my focus over the last several years to ways I might work with plants as spirits and teachers and not just as ingredients.

To Dionysos

My god,

I hope you know

that I could never not be devoted to you.

Though I know I've seen only a fraction,

walked little of this labyrinth,

and still question my intuition,

you are the grand hologram,

the lightning strike that cannot be unseen

even when I didn't know I had the eyes for it.

If you never spoke a word to me,

never stroked my skin to gooseflesh

or caught me as I danced recklessly in your name,

it is all only to remember the truth,

(which is eternal)

that you are in my blood, my tears, my breath,

my love and longing,

for this life (Life!)

filling me to the brim.

And even when i pass away this body

whose limbs have swayed and lept, knelt and walked,

wrought and ached, for you.

Still, you will be there.

I know and I remember.

Devotions to Ariadne

I've been a bit negligent on observing devotional days and I've been trying to change that this month.  I realized that part of my problem is that I feel as if I should be able to devote a whole *day* to each one, and so when that seemed impossible, I would try to move it around, but inevitably other obstacles, and you know, life, gets in the way.  So I'm telling myself that "the day is the day is the day".  Whole days set aside for festivals are wonderful, but there's no need to be separating the spiritual from the mundane completely all the time, and in fact probably a lot of arguments FOR blending them.  I've revised my lists of possible activities for each devotional day, to include small activities as well as more time consuming ones.  And most importantly, just keeping the god/dess in mind during the day, and being present, paying attention... which doesn't take any time, simply effort!  This small change in perspective seems to be working well for me this month.

When I first started observing devotional days, the 4th was for Aphrodite.  I had a small shrine for Her as well.  Though I never had any direct experiences with Her, I felt like I couldn't NOT honor the blessings of love in my life somehow.  Aphrodite is a grand and complex goddess, with plenty of association with Dionysos.  And while I didn't feel like my offerings and prayers fell flat exactly, something just didn't click. 

Something had stuck with me that I had read in Otto's Dionysos: Myth and Cult, which was that on Cyprus Ariadne was worshipped as Ariadne Aphrodite (which to me brings to mind Ariadne as deified by Dionysos).  So with this in mind, I made some changes to my shrine intending to focus on this syncretized aspect.  I used red and black cloths, I added a snake goddess statue I'd acquired many years ago, and a round mirror for Ariadne's lunar aspects.  Admittedly now I've just come to think of it as "Ariadne's shrine", for I feel she's more complex than this particular aspect  (and likely was a Minoan deity in her own right). So I hope Aphrodite takes no offense... But it feels less as if I'm "changing deities" than that I am adjusting my practice to reflect the goddess that my heart was already resonating with, if that makes sense.  I'm not sure why I was hesitant to do this in the first place... but my experience with Ariadne has been a bit like the labyrinth itself.  She actually led me to Dionysos to begin with, in Her roundabout way, and since then I danced around Her for a quite a while before getting to this point.

I wasn't sure at first where to place a devotional day for Her... The full moon seemed appropriate considering Her lunar aspects, although it falls awful close to Dionysos', so I settled on keeping it on the 4th for now.  I realized when the day came that this is when the waxing moon looks very much like bull horns!

All that being said!  I spent some time communing with Ariadne on Her devotional day.  Offered up milk and honey, and some white wine, as well as some lotus-scented incense.  I put on some music, and sat down with pen and paper hoping to gel together some of my haphazard ideas for an Ariadne festival into something more concrete and organized.  And indeed, I wrote out a very long invocation for her and everything fell into place for the festival, which is both encouraging and exciting.  I've feel that this will be one of two yearly festivals for her.  (This one in midsummer, the second in the fall.)  But since this is my first attempt at creating a new festival, we shall see how it all turns out!  At the time of posting this, the festival is actually tomorrow! Or today after I've slept, however you wish to look at it.)

One last thing to note -- dreams have been something I've been thinking about off and on lately (including dream incubation, lucid dream states, how one might induce oracular dreams, that sort of thing).  It was not something I was thinking about while I was brainstorming for Ariadne's festival, but nevertheless, the message came through suddenly that She could be a dream guide.  And I thought, Lady of the Labyrinth, holder of the thread... well that makes sense!  I'll blog more about this as it develops.

Devotional Day Trip (with salt and pepper)

On our last devotional day to Dionysos, we took a day trip up north.  I had been feeling an itch to get out of the city, so we decided to go to the Tonto Natural Bridge.  My husband had been there before but I had not.  

We woke up later in the morning than we intended, but started up anyway.  The day was beautiful, and we took a different route than usual, which was actually even more scenic than I thought it would be.   We were delighted to see patches of snow still on the ground the farther north we got.  (Snow delights me when it's non-threatening in this way.)

On the way there we were waylaid by a mutual weakness, one that has cut hours out of many a road trip that we have taken...  

Antique store!

Here you can see our favorite find of the day that made the detour worth it.  They are salt and pepper shakers in the shape of and decorated with fly agaric mushrooms (although yellow instead of the traditional red):

My husband had tried to describe the land bridge to me, but it's understandably hard to describe.  Needless to say, it exceeded my expectations.   The drive there takes you steeply down into a canyon, and you can't see the bridge until you hike a little bit, and then suddenly it's THERE.  Much bigger than I anticipated - it looks like a huge cave at first, until you're in front of it and close enough to see through the other side.  Water trickles down steadily from the top down into the creek that cuts through it, down onto bright blue water and green moss.  On the interior walls underneath it, there's small ledges and caves.  We imagined what it might be like, being one of the first people to stumble upon and discover it in the late 1800's!

(The first pic is from the outside, the second from under the bridge looking out towards the other side.)

We did the full hike down into the bridge, through it, and went up the ravine on the opposite side.  Although it wasn't long, it was a very rocky hike, sometimes necessitating using your hands to climb and balance.  This was the first strenuous hike I've done since breaking my foot last year, and although I had some achey metatarsals towards the end, I held up pretty well.

Our waking up late and getting distracted by knick knacks meant that we only had a couple hours to spend there.  Which means we'll have to make another trip back soon!

Since the park closed we couldn't picnic there like we planned, so we drove further north trying to find an out of the way place in the forested area where we could stop.  We had to settle for a place just a little off the road.  There was plenty of snow on the ground and with the temperature dropping with the sunset, we settled on having a car picnic in the backseat.  It was a lovely feast with homemade bread, olive tapenade, falafel and hummus, oranges and wine.  Most of the wine was poured out onto the damp earth at the foot of the largest pine tree nearby.  While looking into the trees, we saw what looked like a wolf (but was more likely a large coyote with a healthy winter coat) loping through the trees surprisingly close by!

I'm very much looking forward to the warmer weather allowing us to go camping again - I've missed it.  

Heart Protected, Muses Neglected

I am a daydreamer.  I daydream scenarios both good and bad, impossible and probable.  I've been trying to master this more, particularly the negative ones, for I know part of it stems from my need to feel in control by working through all possible situations ahead of time.  (That whole statement doesn't work does it?  Damn.  Back to square one.  Well let's just say I'm trying to be more aware of how I focus my energy.)  Nevertheless, the more constructive daydreams become, essentially, a conversation with myself.  Sometimes they are illuminating ones, as far as facing my own fears and motivations goes.

In this way, I realized today (not for the first time) that I am holding back.  I am afraid of simply being happy sometimes, of letting go and appreciating the moment.  This manifests in particular ways, ways that are fucking sneaky sometimes... where I can easily justify to myself that I am simply being practical or protecting my heart.  But those are just excuses. The past is no excuse either, even less so.

How simple it is to be sad, to surrender, risk nothing.

I would have said this holding back has only been occasional and I've been fine on the whole, except for one thing that struck me today: I have not written any poetry in months.

I can't even remember the last.  Sometime before October?  Perhaps even longer ago than I think.  To me, this is very significant: both the fact itself and that it took me so long to take note.

I DO remember having ideas and being in poetic moods.  I have had no shortage of inspiration and experiences to draw from.  I also remember, further back along this time-line, thinking "I don't have the heart to write right now..."  And slowly that excuse morphed into something else, this vaguest sense of bottling up and redirecting, that I did without even thinking about it.

I don't think this is a wall I can batter down between phone calls at work, but it's a wall I don't want to ignore anymore either.  The more I think about it the more I see other ways it's manifesting.

For instance, last Thursday was the day I had planned my devotional day for the Muses.  It coincided, coincidentally, with a lecture at the art museum that I wanted to see about "goddesses" (talented actresses) in the golden age of film.  This is a topic I am both interested in and know little about, so it was very enjoyable.  That was followed by a walk around the art museum to see some favorite pieces and sections.  All in all, a lovely day, and very much in line with their realm. 

However, I must admit that my last 2 devotional days for the Muses included no actual creative work done by myself, which I would have thought would be my main focus on these days. 

Not to mention that I'm a musician whose instruments are no doubt feeling seriously neglected of late. 

That probably sounds like a morose note to end on, but hey, I'm a fan of the minor keys.  One way or another, it's time for a time out, for barrier-breaking and becoming creative again.

love is the every only god

Thursday I had set aside as a devotional day for Aphrodite.  Somewhat unplanned, I ended up spending the whole day with someone I love very dearly, and we had some very intense and heartfelt conversation.  Even looking back on the conversation itself, there is an air of something incredibly sacred about it. 

 

So was the intention of having this devotional day ahead of time part of how it turned out, very much a day devoted to Her, though not the way I planned?  Is it simply synchronous?    I had in the back of my mind a bit of guilt that I hadn't meditated for the goddess specifically, hadn't done any of the solitary things I had planned.  I didn't even give her offerings until Friday.  But would She mind, considering how it went?  A interesting lesson in what devotion is - not always what is planned, and that the spontaneous participation in life and its synchronicities can be even more powerful.

 

I am so filled to the brim with gratitude to Aphrodite and Dionysos and the immanent Divine for the gifts I've been given (and just as importantly, the knowledge to see these gifts with clarity) that I'm not sure how to express or repay it sufficiently.  I am blessed.  But how could I not be?  I am god, as are You.